Spare the rod and spoil the child. This old truism has had a bad rap for decades as most people think it can only be read to mean that children must be beaten with sticks. That’s not the only way to read the saying, and no one needs to clobber their offspring with switches in order to recognize the kernel of truth: shielding misbehaving people from consequences encourages more bad behavior.
That could not be more evident than it is in 2025. Forty years ago young people mocked their parents’ generation for getting upset over the increasing profanity and vulgarity in pop music. It became a pastime for Gen X kids (guilty) to call their moms shrieking hysterical harpies when they didn’t want us buying and playing record albums with explicit lyrics. The woman behind the successful campaign to slap parental warning labels on record albums, Tipper Gore, became a hated name among anyone under 30 in the 1980s.
Flippant young people love to claim their parents are just fuddy duddies predicting dire consequences that will never come to pass. Except they do come to pass, and the kids only learn that when they become old fuddy duddies too. Look around. There isn’t a “please” or “thank you” in sight during formerly polite business transactions. People run red lights routinely, pedestrians stroll onto dark streets at night with earbuds in without bothering to check whether a truck is bearing down on them. It’s never only about “silly old manners.”
Those who live in urban, or even suburban, areas, are now used to seeing “shoppers” steal clothes, laundry soap, and hair grease right out in the open. And why shouldn’t they? Liberal states like California essentially decriminalized shoplifting under the law until they woke up and put the law back the way it was supposed to be. But the damage has already been done. Since the 1960s we’ve treated every rule, law, or boundary as some sort of personal oppression against our freedom, and multiple generations of Americans now believe they’re morally and legally entitled to behave as badly as they want.
It shows up in encounters like this from a police bodycam. In the video shown on this X/Twitter posting, cops are trying to eject “Jasmine” from a clothing store. Apparently the store staff didn’t like her behavior, and told her to leave. Jasmine refused, because ain’t nobody gonna tell her what to do.
Check it out.
The articulate and respectful Jasmine tells the police they can, like, tell her to leave and stuff, “but I’m gonna be back in here regardless.” Ain’t nobody goan’ tell Jasmine what to do.
The cops arrested her. Jasmine decided to get grabby and try to slap the cops, so she earned herself a felony charge on top of the shoplifting.
X/Twitter users had things to say:
Sadly, this guy speaks truth:
